May 2009

Catch the Wave from Google, and you can see the dilemma we face as move to 4G. First of all lets give them credit. The Rasmussen's brothers and their team (aka google maps leaders) have developed a document strategy they call wave.

These waves are a federated document management flow. For those of us with history, this could sound like Lotus Notes, but on the web its so much more. This system on the web makes near real time communication incredibly fast. If you watch the presentation its clear they are struggling getting their arms around the ways to use this tool, but in effect the way I have come to view this is they have made collaborative webbing as opposed to email thats viewed on the web this webmail moves in and out of paradigms, such as twitter, social networks, etc.

But the real power of making the document live is the way that the security is implemented. If federation works as well as they claim, a new model for online communication will be delivered. As carriers look to roll out 4G as a data network Web-centric services like Wave may be compelling consumers than any new device.

Okay, the conversations today, are starting to freak me out. While many declared IMS dead a while ago, the carriers are now ready to talk about SIP without mentioning IMS.

For awhile it was stated that IMS was the way to enable SIP into the legacy network. Now what has evolved is IMS may be enabled in some aspect of the infrastructure, but if you want to talk services, you can stop the code and just say SIP to everyone now.

Pretty amazing.

But dont think the story is over for IMS. Content Delivery, Virtualization, Legacy integration, etc. It all points to some aspect of IMS. We could claim that IMS is like a couch, it means sectional. After all no one claims they are implementing everything, but almost everyone thinks they are implementing some aspect of IMS. So at the end of the day IMS means alot of things to alot of people, but new services is not one of them.

A good friend who works with cable operators posed that question to me as we talked about the stimulus. Right now I have been quiet about alot of this because the speculation has been more or less valuable.

The Stimulus for telecom has a cascade of decisions that have to occur and while I know of friends with an inside track, I don't think my talking about their activities is helpful.

But this question is a sound one. The reason is because of the definition of broadband is being set. 100 MB happens to be the preferred capacity in most discussions, but cable operators like 50 MB as their preferred unit of measure.

As Cablevision rolls out its public WiFi the question of integration to home solutions can they gain access to stimulus strategies. Now combine that with the ability to use White Space and you have a 4G network opportunity.

A few years back the dial up experience of the Internet made application delivery a troublesome experience. Today with relatively small throughput in the way of access pipes, people have found applications relatively easy to get to without knowledge of QOS. Likewise, your cell phone service has improved over the last few years with "fewer dropped calls" and the ability to "hear me now" in more places.

But the migration to 4G is going to include the use of OFDM technology and MIMO antenna strategies. In effect, it's going to improve quality by distributing the signal and making add / drop decisions on the quality of the signal. These techniques have a track record in the WiFi standard, and are the rationale for migration to both WiMAX and LTE.

This ability to move to multiple input multiple output (MIMO) is new when considering how to deliver at the carrier level, particularly given the diversity of situations. As you know with wireless antenna and battery are a large part of the analysis that has to take place. You can think of it like the days of modems, the experience then was that the weakest link in your connection was the last mile, now the weakest links will be the channels between your device and the carrier.

Verizon's having Qualcomm fall on its sword earlier in the year with the announcement that LTE was delayed; Verizon's restated their commercial rollout as last half of 2010. If you recall, they were aggressively saying 2009 in 2008 and now they say 2010 in 2009. Now on the positive side, they are going to trial this year. Let's give them credit for pushing the effort ahead of the vendors.

After Cisco bought WiMax radio supplier Navini in October 2007, industry watchers have waited and wondered why the biggest networking vendor wasn't doing more with WiMax in the U.S. market. Now after Wednesday's announcement of a multi-year deal between Cisco and Clearwire, the waiting is over -- and you have to think Cisco just delivered a big wake-up call about WiMax to Silicon Valley and Wall Street in one big move.

What really made the deal big news was the inclusion of Cisco's pledge to ship a mobile WiMax end-user device before year's end. The other part of the deal, which involves Clearwire using Cisco gear in its core IP network, isn't so surprising -- in any IP network of Clearwire's size, you might be more surprised not to find Cisco gear in the wiring closets.

But by pledging to develop end-user devices, Cisco is signaling to the rest of the industry (and investors, if they are listening) that WiMax is more than a curiousity.

As the world continues to view the smartphone market as a battle between RIM and Apple, my T-Mobile Google phone is about to get an OS update that will bring on some new features. The update will also provide improvements to the camera capture feature, GPS and G-Mail integration.

The software release includes an on screen qwerty keyboard, video recording and playback, and some widgets. While the market for third party applications is still decidedly in Apple's favor, I am excited about the prospect of receiving remote updates to my G Phone.

It is my contention that, going forward, the carriers will need to distinguish themselves beyond the type of device that they support. Once they are able to do this, remote provisioning is going to grow in the mobile market. Releases of software upgrades are common, but he question is will the carrier's participation be something more than simply distributing these upgrades? I believe the carriers will need to show a willingness to attack these provisioning issues if they do not want to be "just a dumb pipe".

Going forward it is still a question on whether there will be a shared app store, or if it will be device specific. If it is shared, a significant amount of expertise will be required by the carrier to provision these applications.

This Market is Ready to Explode
Apple has migrated 5.5 M subscribers from Verizon Wireless to its' iPhone, It's unclear if T-Mobile's net increase in subs of almost half a million is based specifically on the GPhone, but the fact remains that 23% of all cellular phones are now smartphones, up from about 17% in the first quarter of 2008. As we see sales of smartphones, as a percentage of total cellular phone sales, growing, we have to keep in mind that only two thirds of the smartphones are on a 3G network thus far.